Origins: This document was written on Thursday August 25th, 1580 in colonial Mexico. It is a testament of a woman named Nahua woman named María, but it was actually written by a notary named Juan (de San) Pedro. The document was meant to be read by her family (close relatives - as it says in the actual testament).

Motives: María is an invalid woman who is leaving instructions for her relatives on what to do with her property upon her death. She makes it clear that she is not a wealthy woman and has no goods to hand out to her family. The only thing she really has is her house. She wants her house to be sold, rather than leaving it to someone in her family. Her reason for doing so is to repay her debts with the money from the house. If there is any money left after the debts are paid off, she requests that the money be used to say masses for her.

Perspective: When documents are dictated to others to be written down, we always have to wonder if we can completely rely on the source. In this case, the person in question is the notary (who actually transcribed the document). However, since other names are listed at the end of the document as being witnesses, then we can probably rely on this document as being accurate. Concerning María, we see that she lived a simple life and did not possess a lot of wealth. And because she is instructing her family to use the profit from selling her house to pay off her debts, rather than just splitting the money amongst the relatives, this suggests something about her character. She is being honest about the money that she owes people, and she is being loyal to her fellow community members.

Text: The topic of this document is simple and because María did not possess a lot of goods to hand out to her relatives, the text is very short. The text also shows a diligence in record-keeping due to the list of names at the end of the document.

Information: This document shows that the Mesoamericans of the 16th century were engaging in record-keeping. They also understood the importance of a notary to make documents official. We are also told that María was married twice, so this shows that women were not always left as widows if something happened to their first husband. The religious aspect of colonial Mexico is also evident in this document. In the beginning of the testament, we find the phrase “for God our Lord” and near the end of the testament, she requests that if there is any money left after selling her house, “let them say masses for me”.

After analyzing the text using this method, I found that I was able to better understand the document and the reasons for its existence.